


Seven Presents for Seven Children

by FanGirlofManyThings



Series: Almost Normal [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, the hargreeves deserve love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 11:49:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20389228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FanGirlofManyThings/pseuds/FanGirlofManyThings
Summary: On their seventeenth birthday Grace gives each of them a gift.Just a little drabble on each of those gifts in the lives of the Hargreeves children.Vaguely related to another story but is completely stand alone.





	Seven Presents for Seven Children

**Author's Note:**

> In one of the episodes you can see a cross stitch in Diego's room. My personal headcannon became that Grace must have made it for him, and what she did for one she must have done for seven.

Seven hand stitched pieces of art. Each one a labor of love, created for seven children who didn’t have enough love in their lives. Something for them to look at and be reminded that someone on this earth loved them, even when they struggled to love themselves. Even if that person was an advanced artificial intelligence unit, created by their soulless father so he didn’t have to spend time with them; that particular fact had ceased to matter years ago anyway. She had become more than her creator had intended.

The framed cross stitches were their seventeenth birthday present from their mother.

Luther had been very sincere, if not slightly formal, in his thanks, always the perfect Number one. Underneath his name, was a disembodied arm, flexing a bulging bicep. He’d hung it above his dresser and it stayed there until he’d left for the moon. There it reminded him every morning of why what they were doing was important. Everyone on this planet had a person who loved them, and it was their job to protect this world. It had been an easy choice to take it with him as one of the few personal objects he was allowed. There hadn’t been much free wall space in his moonbase, so he’d tucked it next to the computer, where it would be visible as he typed his reports. 4 years later, when he’d returned to that awful house, he put it back on the hook that had been it’s first home.

Diego had accepted his with a gruff thank you, clearly meant to imply he thought he was too cool for things like handmade presents from his mother. But none of his siblings missed the little smile on his face. Klaus would tease him about it later, as he shoved it in his nightstand drawer, Ben looking on, admonishing Kalus to be nicer. But that night and many nights after, he would pull it out and trace the stitches that made up his name and the two crossed knives underneath it. When he left that godforsaken house a few months later, all he had taken was the few pieces of non-academy clothing he owned, the knife set the bastard had commissioned for him when he was eight (it was a damn good set and there was no way he could afford to replace it) and the cross stitch. At the police academy it had lived on the top shelf of his wardrobe, under his standard issue sweatshirt. When he’d gotten kicked out, it became the only spot of color in the boiler room Al let him use, in exchange for mopping the floors, six days a week with a mop and once a week with whatever body was put across from him in the ring.

Allsion had been genuinely pleased with hers, giving their mother a tight hug and a kiss on the cheek. She had hung it above her bed, well she had Luther hang it but she picked the spot. When she was getting ready every morning, it would catch her eye and bring a smile to her face. A little spot of joy in a house that had so little, her name, her real name not her number or her hero name carefully stitched above a pair of ruby red lips. When it was her turn to leave, and to make her dreams come true in L.A., she had taken it with her. It had a spot of honor in every apartment she ever lived in. From her first dingy studio apartment, paid for mostly by unnamed roles in b-rated movies, to her swanky, multi-bedroom apartment in the heart of downtown L.A. Only after she married Patrick and they started their lives together did she pack away the cross stitch. It didn’t go far though, just into a pretty box on the top shelf of her closet where she put memories still precious to her but out of place in her new life. Then the divorce happened and she found herself back in an apartment and the cross stitch was the first thing she’d hung up on the blank white walls. Still a spot of joy all these years later.

Klaus may have been high when he stumbled down the stairs for the cake and presents Reginald begrudgingly allowed Grace to give them, but that hadn’t prevented him from appreciating the gift any less. He’d cooed over it lovingly in his own way of telling his mother he loved it. There hadn’t been any space to hang it on his poster covered walls, so he’d propped it up next to his mirror, where he could see it every night when he did his makeup. Sometimes he felt a twinge of guilt at letting his mother down but then the tiny cartoon ghost below his name, reminded him of what he was running away from. He’d left that hellhole two months after Diego, on a path that couldn’t have been more opposite if they’d tried. He took nothing but the clothes on his back and the cross stitch, neatly folded and tucked carefully in an inner pocket of his coat. From that night on it had never left his person. Sometimes during brief moments of almost sobriety he’d take it out and let himself question his life choices but he always came to the same conclusion, that anything was better than the howling voices. It was with him through all his years on the streets, whether on his person or with his personal effects when checked into rehab as part of Diego or Ben’s requirements for bailing him out of jail. Years later, when the bastard finally kicked the bucket, like a few of his siblings he returned to that house and the first thing he did was put the cross stitch back in it’s frame. It was frayed at the edges, dirty and stained in more than a few places but it still brought him happiness. 

Five had been gone for over two years by the time of their seventeenth birthday. But their mother had still stitched him a piece just like the rest of them. She had written out his number in neat rows of stitches and below she had carefully stitched out the figure of a person surrounded by blue light. After the cake had been eaten and cleaned up, she had placed it on the nightstand in his room. When he finally managed to return years later, he’d overlooked it in his haste to stop the apocalypse but when things had settled down Alison found him standing in the middle of his room holding it. She had explained that it was a birthday present and that they all had one. He’d nodded but didn’t say anything, sentimental reactions weren’t exactly in his repertoire but she’d noticed that it was on his nightstand weeks later.

Ben had thanked their mother in the quiet way he always did when she did something for them, almost as if he acknowledged it too loudly, it would be taken away from him. She’d smiled at him and ruffled his hair in the same way that always made his nose scrunch up. He’d hung it up next to the door to his room and for the rest of the time he lived there, he touched it as he left. His full name, Benedict, above a single disembodied, twisting tentacle, the same basic color pattern of the horror. It should have bothered him more, the constant reminder of the thing within him but mostly he just appreciated his mother’s intent and the fact that she thought they would appreciate them. When he’d left a year later, after getting a job as a barista near where Klaus preferred to hang out, he took it with him and hung it up in his bedroom of the apartment he rented with two coworkers. Sometimes when he could tempt Klaus off the street for a night with the promise of food and a shower he would find him staring at it. After he had died, Reginald had sent Pogo and Luther to collect his things. Grace had unpacked the few boxes carefully and put the cross stitch back next to his door. After he returned with Kalus, sometimes late at night he would go and just stare at it, trying to remember the few truly happy memories he had with his siblings. 

Vanaya took hers with a thanks even quieter then Ben’s. Unlike their father, their mother never forgot Vanaya, though she always acted surprised when Grace included her. She treasured the cross stitch, with it’s tiny violin and bow intricately stitched below her name. While she lived at home it lived on top of her dresser, centered between a drawing Ben had given her and one of the few photos she had been included in, it had been taken by their mother on their tenth birthday. When she made her first orchestra, a house orchestra for a local play house, she moved out as swiftly as she could get approved for an apartment. Like her siblings before her, she had very little she wanted to take, some clothes, her violin and the cross stitch. She hung it in her dingy living room, sometimes while she was writing her book she would glance up at it. Reminded of the awfulness of that house, she would return to her story with renewed vigor. While she had no ill will for her mother directly, being reminded of that house and what happened in it filled her with rage. After she published the book, she took the cross stitch down and shoved it in the back of her linen closet in an attempt to remove the last few physical reminders of that place from her life.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
